When we broke up, we didn’t just break up. I did not break off our relationship the way you would break off a piece of something to share with someone else, no—we didn’t just break up. We fell apart. We crumbled and we shattered, falling down the rabbit hole along with every other promise that I made to you. When I said I would love you forever and when you told me things would never end, words spoken in the dead of night that vanished into thin air when I said goodbye. When I said goodbye because for the end of this there was no we. If it were mutual, if it were fair, we would have broken up. But we didn’t. We fell apart the way the earth did when its pieces began to shift. We fell apart the way a candidate for president’s campaign did when the world realized what an absolute a****** he was and threw their signs away. We shattered like a sugar-glass bottle over a stunt double’s head, we exploded. I think you hate me, I hope you hate me, for the way we—for the way I—said goodbye because it wasn’t right. But neither was I and you deserve to know that. You deserve what I could never give because my hands were shaky and my arms were burdened by other weights. To hate who I am would be better than to love a memory.
I hope you find a girl that memorizes all of your scars and kisses them more gently than she would ever kiss your lips. I hope you find a girl that knows every contour and crevice of your own body so well that she mistakes it for her own. I hope you find the kind of girl that most men would kill for because she’s just perfect and she’s all yours—but wait. I hope you find a girl that doesn’t want to be owned. To be dominated. To be kept like a secret in the corner of your heart, I hope she yells at you at first when you call her mine. I hope she grows accustomed to it but you know, that even though she said yes when you asked her to be yours she isn’t… really… yours. She’s her own person. But still, I hope she is good to you. I hope your new girlfriend doesn’t cry when you touch her stomach because it’s just a stomach and she’s fine with it. I hope she can piece together your stumbling and stammered words when you’re trying to explain something, like she’s putting together a puzzle she did when she was five years old. I hope she has you memorized and I hope she’s good to you, takes her time with your stutter and never criticizes you. I hope she appreciates the little things, and does not stress over the big ones. I wish only for her hand to fit so sweetly with yours, and I wish for you to hear sweetness coming from her at all times of the day.
I don’t know how you will meet her, and I don’t think you’ll ever tell me. But know this… I do hope she is good to you.